Roosevelt as President

The destruction of the Lusitania by a German submarine , brought from Roosevelt a scathing denunciation of German methods of warfare, and successive attacks on what seemed to him the timid and inept statesmanship of the Wilson administra tion. There was a kind of berserker fury in these attacks. Be tween himself and his opponents in power he knew no middle ground of compromise and party truce ; the issues that divided him from them were to his mind not political but moral. It seemed to him that Wilson Was deliberately lulling the public into a sense of false security, permitting it to dissipate its spiritual energies in an orgy of acquisition while their president set about with gestures and phrases to exorcise an opponent both aggressive and armed. Once more Roosevelt appealed to the public con science, and stirred it as never before.

In this last struggle of a stormy life, he rose to what seemed to many of his countrymen new heights of devotion, as he pleaded for the defence of those institutions which he had as president himself revitalized. "Let us pay with our bodies for our souls' desire!" The shift of issues had brought to Roosevelt's sup port many of the men who had been his bitterest enemies, and early in 1916 he was put forward as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president. He warned the public that he must not be nominated unless the nation were in an "heroic mood." An effort was made by the Progressives to persuade the Republi cans to join them in nominating Roosevelt, but the majority of the Republican delegates were not ready to forgive the schism of 1912, and his suggestion that Gen. Wood be named as a com promise candidate never reached the convention. Roosevelt re fused the nomination of the Progressive Party, and gave the Republican nominee, Charles Evans Hughes, his support.

When the United States entered the war in April 1917, "the Colonel," as he was affectionately known, offered to raise a division of volunteers from among the ranks of the "outdoor men" of the country who would be almost immediately ready for service; 250, 000 men recorded their desire to go under his leadership to France and Congress passed a bill authorizing the creation of two divisions of volunteers, but the President refused his consent. "This is a very exclusive war," Roosevelt remarked, "and I have been black balled by the committee on admissions." His four sons all went to the front ; two were wounded, one Quentin, the youngest, a lieutenant in the Air Service, was killed in combat over the German lines. Roosevelt, forbidden to fight in the field, grimly and in bitter disappointment flung himself into the work that lay at hand. Here and there over the country he spoke for the Lib erty Loan campaign, for the Red Cross and other relief agencies; and in the pages of the Kansas City Star and the Metropolitan Magazine fought week after week for speed in military prepara tion, for an honest facing of facts and for whole-hearted and un reserved participation in the war by the side of the allies, greet ing the Administration's satisfaction over the "happy confusion" of the war preparations with words of stinging realism.

The fever he had contracted in Brazil returned now and again. For weeks he travelled and made public addresses in spite of it.

In Feb. 1918, however, he became dangerously ill; was operated upon, recovered, returned to his full activity and was again laid low. His illness scarcely abated his ceaseless activity and in nowise seemed to weaken the force of his fighting spirit. At no previous period in his career was his following so large or so devoted. It seemed as though, in the intensity and grief of the war-years, his countrymen turned to him with new understanding and affection. While scholars talked of this or that notable act of an administration which was already acquiring a kind of glamour in the perspective of a decade, the common man called him "the great American" and let others analyse why. He died in his sleep on Jan. 6, 1919.

Character and Influence.

It can be said of Washington that he founded the American nation, and of Lincoln that he preserved it ; it can be said of Roosevelt that he revitalized it. Twice, at critical times, through his vision, his ardour, his effective anger, his faith in American institutions and his peculiar understanding of all sections of the American people, he cleansed the body of the nation of treacherous poisons, and set its soul to work on labours higher than the acquisition of physical comforts. He dreamed nobly for his country and impelled millions of his countrymen to dream nobly. He was the most versatile man who has ever been president of the United States. Apart from his gifts as politician, statesman and popular leader, he was eminent as naturalist, soldier, orator, historian ; and was one of the most widely-read men of his time. The Winning of the West has faults of hasty composition inevitable in a book written in the off-hours of a crowded life, but it maintains its authority ; his Naval History of the War of 1812 has not been supplanted as the leading work on the subject. He was an assiduous and occasionally a brilliant writer. His narratives are lucid and swift, his descriptions full of colour and significant detail, his literary criticism straight forward and free from the jargon of the craft. His letters have taken a high place in epistolary literature ; his volume of Letters to his Children is already a classic. His political writings, more over, are direct and clear, open to the most untutored intelligence, and flashing at intervals with arresting epithets. Under the stress of emotion, in some of the prefaces of his hunting books, in a descriptive passage here and there—in his appeal, for instance for imagination in the writing of history—his prose became trans muted into the gold of poetry.